Market-based massively parallel Internet computing

Recent advances in Internet connectivity and implementations of safer distributed computing through languages such as Java provide the foundation for transforming computing resources into tradable commodities. We have developed Javelin, a Java-based prototype of a globally distributed heterogeneous, high-performance computational infrastructure that conveniently enables rapid execution of massively parallel applications. Our infrastructure consists of three entities: Hosts, clients, and brokers. Our goal is to allow users to buy and sell computational power using supply and demand, and market mechanisms to marshal computational power far beyond what can be achieved via conventional techniques. Several research issues must be worked out to make this vision a reality: allocating resources between computational objects via market mechanisms; expressing and enforcing scheduling and quality of service constraints; modeling programming in a global computing ecosystem; supporting heterogeneous execution without sacrificing computational speed; ensuring host security; global naming and communication; and client privacy.